Gillard grilled and heckled at community cabinet

Bridie Jabour

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been grilled about school funding and heckled at a community cabinet meeting last night, with an angry mother declaring "we are not white trash'' as she raised the issue of bullying.

Schooling funding reform dominated the community cabinet meeting, with Ms Gillard imploring voters to pressure their state governments into working with the federal government.

About 400 community members - many of them associated with the local schools - attended the cabinet meeting at Redbank Plains High School in the marginal Labor seat of Blair, west of Brisbane.

The Prime Minister reprimanded one unruly participant, Jordan Nash, who stood on his chair with his hand raised until Ms Gillard promised to let him have the last question of the evening.

There were three questions on the review in the space of an hour, with one woman asking: "What is stopping the implementations of the Gonski report? It's so important, we need you guys to get on board."

The federal government is yet to formally respond to the report.

Ms Gillard said she was going to "snaffle" the question from Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth Peter Garrett.

"It's a very big change to what we have now with very big financial costs," she said.

"We are very focused on that work and we will be responding but that challenge from David Gonski was not a challenge to us, it was a challenge to state governments.

"We will be asking our state colleagues to work with us and for those of you who feel so passionately about education, we will probably be asking you to make your views very clearly known."

Members of the Kruger State School P and C wore matching shirts featuring the slogan "I Give a Gonski" and a spokeswoman for the group said it was statistically one of the most disadvantaged schools in the state.

"The Gonski review is going to help all of our children, not just the ones who are labelled," she said.

"It's going to help our overworked teachers, it's going to help our families, our community as a whole.

"The Gonski report will help fix our education system."

Less than two weeks after the implementation of the federal government's carbon tax, the controversial topic barely rated a mention.

Despite the carbon tax coming into effect on July 1, there were no questions directly about it but one man asked when the Prime Minister was going to acknowledge the full effects of climate change.

Ms Gillard's beliefs were also questioned, with one man asking the Prime Minister how she could be an atheist and swear allegiance to the Constitution when "it is relied on by the blessing of the almighty God".

Ms Gillard said one of the strengths of Australia was its diversity.

"My world outlook is my world outlook and I'm not asking anyone to share it," she said.